The tattoo had been Mason’s way of owning fatherhood before he could even trust himself to say the actual word. I got a matching one after he brought Zoey home—my own promise to him to be her backup if anything ever happened to him.
“It wasn’t until I got shot that things started to come into focus. Amador’s guys came for Mason. I stepped in the way. Nina stuck to my side like she’d been doing it for years.”
Chris doesn’t move, but there’s tension in his arms now. A static energy just beneath the surface. Was it the mention of Amador? Or maybe he’s picturing it—Nina bent over me, blood on her hands, panic buried behind her eyes. Like saving me was the only option.
“Later, she overheard something at the hospital. Callie and your mom talking. That maybe you weren’t as gone as everyone believed.”
Now he shifts. Not much—but I see the flicker in his eyes.
Of course he reacts to that. The part where she found out. Because no one thinks about what it means to come back until they realize people had to live without them. Mason went through the same realization.
“We’d already heard rumors at the DEA, but I didn’t find out she knew until she came back to my hospital room and sat beside me like the ground underneath her had shifted and she was trying not to fall.
“She didn’t even cry then, either. She just stared at nothing. Held my hand without really holding it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so still.
“I didn’t ask her to explain. But eventually, she did. A few days later. Just a handful of sentences. Like she was trying not to say your name out loud in case it shattered her. She called you Shrödinger’s Chris, as if it was a joke. But I could tell she was too terrified to open the box.”
Chris’s free hand curls into a fist. But his gaze stays locked on the floor.
I don’t blame him for staying quiet. I know what it’s like to hear your name spoken through someone else’s pain. The weight of it. The way it never sounds like yours anymore.
“She didn’t talk about you like someone talks about an ex. It was grief. The kind that leaves marks.”
My voice lowers. “I knew, from that moment on, I wasn’t just dating her. I was competing with a ghost. And then the ghost came back.”
He looks at me then. The ache is sharp behind his eyes, but there’s clarity too. Like something just snapped into place.
He needed that sentence. Not to hurt him. To name something neither of us has wanted to say aloud.
“I don’t blame you,” I add. “She never stopped loving you. But I don’t think she ever expected to have to choose. I don’t think she knew whether or not she even had a choice. I kept hoping the fact that she stayed with me for four months was a sign that she’d picked me, but deep down I knew better.”
Chris exhales sharply and pushes to his feet as if this is a revelation he can’t endure being so close to. But he had to have known. If nothing else, that night in LA should have been enough to make it clear.
He paces a few steps like he doesn’t trust himself to stay still. Like his body’s caught between fight and flight and every option tastes wrong.
“I thought I came here to stop her,” he says finally, jaw tight. “To protect her. She isn’t ready for something like this.”
“She’s more capable than either of us gives her credit for.”
His laugh is bitter. “Yeah, well, capable doesn’t mean invincible. It doesn’t mean she should have to prove anything.”
“She knows that.”
“Does she?” he fires back. “Because I’m not sure she believes it.”
“How the fuck would you know? You’ve been gone for a decade!”
“I know!” he bellows, raising the bottle as if he might throw it, catches himself. Then he carefully, precisely sets it down on the table. He rakes a hand through his hair, then looks at the door.
“I shouldn’t have come. I just… after last week, I needed…” He’s breathing fast, like he can’t catch his breath. But the mention of last week sends heat radiating through my limbs.
But he can’t finish the sentence. Can’t put voice to the ache inside himself, to ask for what will fill it. Maybe because what will fill it is on her way to Los Angeles right now, probably stopped in Grand Junction for the night like she planned.
And I’m all that’s left. Well, me and all the things from her life that Chris no longer recognizes as part of her.
He stares helplessly at me for another beat, then turns and walks out. Doesn’t look back.
The door slams behind him. Not loud—but final.
